


Barriers Between Us

by Lord_of_Spirits_and_Bazongas



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24220345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lord_of_Spirits_and_Bazongas/pseuds/Lord_of_Spirits_and_Bazongas
Summary: Taking place in the third episode (Corridors) of the final season, Catra and Glimmer have an extended talk.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 122





	Barriers Between Us

The heated spark of the energy barrier felt surprisingly good against Catra’s back. Everything on this impossible to navigate spaceship was so sterile, cold, and lifeless that this was a good reminder that life was much more than just those feelings. Well that, and the girl who’s back was pressed against the other side of said barrier. While she and Glimmer -- or ‘Sparkles’ as Catra liked to put it -- didn’t see eye to eye, and had a lot more reasons to hate it than anything else, in that moment the two of them found solace in each other’s company.  
  
“So…” Catra broke the awkward and long silence between them. Scratching her neck, she tried to look to the other side of the barrier, but couldn’t. She wasn’t really ready to face Glimmer. Not yet; despite seeing her out of the corner of her eye. “What would you be doing if you were back on Etheria right now… and not, you know, a prisoner on an alien ship?” Catra smirked faintly, trying to lighten the mood that was to put it mildly; tense.  
  
  
  
Glimmer took a deep breath and pondered her answer for a moment. Catra was nervously swirling her thumbs. Her tail was restlessly hitting the cold ground floor they were sitting on. Just when Catra was seemingly ready to give up, Glimmer started to speak:  
  
“I guess maybe…” Glimmer said before going silent again. Pressing more of her weight up against the barrier that divided the two of them. She tried to put her mental images together. All of them involved her, Bow and Adora. Even if Adora had been but a short part of her life, she still couldn’t imagine one without her being part of it. And Bow, well, he was always going to be there. Glimmer couldn’t remember the last time she had wanted to do something that didn’t involve him in one way or another. “Maybe I’d go teleporting all around Etheria, visiting the other princesses in their kingdoms.”  
  
Glimmer looked at her hands briefly, opening and closing them. No matter how hard she tried, magic simply didn’t resonate with her anymore. For someone who had been relying on it for so long, it felt crippling. Nevertheless, she pushed all those thoughts to the back of her head before continuing: “If it were a really perfect day, Bow, Adora and I would be having a sleepover.” Glimmer chuckled tiredly. Her lips curled into a faint smile, as the mere mental image of the three of them alone made her feel a bit happy and warm inside.  
  
  
  
Upon hearing Adora’s name, Catra’s ears perked up. She had never been good with jealousy, and that much hadn’t changed as she had grown older, but she didn’t feel like commenting on it. The last thing she wanted now was to be on bad terms with the one person she could have an actual conversation with. “Go on,” Catra prodded, despite the fact that Glimmer wasn’t really facing her to see. Burying her head a bit against her hands, Catra’s tail continued to swing restlessly, yet she didn’t leave. It hurt to hear and imagine Adora with someone else, but imagining Adora being happy was still a lot better than what the reality of the current situation was.  
  
“We’d raid Bright Moon’s kitchen for cake and then we’d eat it with our hands right off the platter.”  
  
What followed was another moment of silence. With her fingers tightly holding onto her upper arms, Catra gathered her courage to speak up. She had never been good at sharing her personal feelings, let alone to someone who wasn’t Adora. “We used to have those.” Catra said as she smiled faintly. The memories of such simpler times came rushing back, but Catra pushed them away with a sniffle. This wasn’t the time nor the place to show such weakness; let alone to a prisoner. Even if Glimmer didn’t feel like one to her anymore.  
  
“What?” Glimmer inquired as she turned her head a bit. She could see faintly that Catra’s lips had curled up into a faint, but genuine smirk.  
  
“Sleepovers,” Catra was quick to reply. Her cold and somewhat dismissive tone seemed to change almost in an instant as she let those past memories embrace her rather than try to push them away as if they had never happened. She had tried to ignore her feelings for what felt like an eternity now, and quite clearly, it wasn’t exactly working out. Now she sounded happy. Especially when she got to say Adora’s name. It was filled with a rare warmth Catra herself didn’t know still existed inside of her.  
  
“Me and Adora, when we were cadets in the Horde.” Catra didn’t even realize it, but her smile kept on growing. Her tail wasn’t now swinging nervously, but rather excitedly. When she closed her eyes briefly, those fingers that were tugging at her arms fooled her into thinking they belonged to Adora and not to herself. She was ready to give anything for even a brief moment like that.

  
  
“We’d play tricks on Kyle, stay up all night whispering about…” Catra went silent again. This time, she had the urge to blurt it all out, say what she wanted to say, but couldn’t. Not yet. Her cheeks quickly turned rosy, her ears twitched and her heart started to beat fast enough for her to register it. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt anything close to this. Had it been so long since she and Adora had been friends?  
  


  
  
“You know, whatever.” Catra said, trying to handwave her last comment away like it was nothing. They both knew that wasn't the case.  
  
  
  
Thanks to how they were back to back against one another, Glimmer couldn’t see the blush on Catra’s face, but the tone of her voice alone made it obvious. It had been clear to anyone who knew the two of them that what they shared was a very deep and intimate bond. Maybe neither of them had yet spoken the obvious and define it with that four letter term, but everyone knew that that was exactly what the two of them felt, no matter how much they tried to deny or fight it. Maybe now that the end of the world was at hand, even someone as defensive as Catra could let her mask slip a bit and admit that despite having faced off against Adora in fields too many times to count by now, she had never considered her as her enemy. How could you do that even to someone that you loved more than anything or anyone in the entire universe?  
  
“Um, I don’t actually know,” Glimmer said. Well, it was quite obvious what Catra was hinting, but she wanted to both extend their talk and get to know Catra and maybe even Adora a bit more. At least this would offer a different perspective about Adora rather than her own stories. Ones that almost always started with ‘So me and Catra were...’ Hearing Adora’s voice inside of her head made Glimmer smile faintly. She was always so excited when talking about her. “Could you tell me more? I’d be interested to know what your life was back then as cadets living together.”  
  
Catra’s first thought was one of paranoia and suspicion. Why did she want to know something like that? Did she really care? Catra did, however, push such doubts to the back of her mind for now as she shook her head to help clear it. With a soft sigh, she pulled her knees closer to her chest. “I don’t know why you care or pretend to...” Catra mumbled in response.  
  
Normally it would have come across as offensive, but Glimmer already knew a few things about Catra. Losing face was clearly something she wasn’t keen on doing, so she’d have to take a few blows herself to compensate for that. It was ultimately a small price to pay to get to understand that one person Adora could never shut up about, even in her sleep. “Would it really shock you if I told you that I’m simply curious? It’s true that… I don’t really like you, but… I’d like to know more. About you and… Adora.”  
  
The name made Catra perk up again. She couldn’t really hide her feelings for her. It had been hard in the past, but now it was simply impossible. “Fine. It’s not like I have anything better to do anyways,” Catra said as she glanced over her shoulder to give Glimmer a faint, but genuine smile. It really was good to have someone to talk to. It was the one thing keeping a person -- be they soldier or prisoner -- sane.  
  
Slouching a bit, Catra moved one of her hands to nervously tap the cold ground beneath her. “Me and Adora, we… we used to talk a lot, before actually falling asleep, like… all the time. So much so that we often got into trouble for it. Or well, I got into trouble for it, as Shadow Weaver wasn’t keen on punishing Adora…” Catra shrugged it off casually, even if it had and still had left deep scars on her.  
  
“Yeah, she’s… well, I can’t say I know her even half as well as you do, but she’s… strict. And a bit scary too,” Glimmer replied.  
  
Catra let out a dry laugh in response. “Oh, you can say that again.” Rolling her eyes, Catra took a deep breath. She had a lot to say about Shadow Weaver, but she wanted positive thoughts right now, not something that’d just make her feel even more depressed.  
  
“Sorry for interrupting,” Glimmer intervened. Knocking on her side of the barrier, she gave Catra the figurative permission to speak again. “Please, continue.”  
  
“I barely even slept in my own bunk. At some point, I was so used to sleeping in Adora’s bunk, that she also started to sleep in that, uh… whatever you call that position…”  
  
“Fetal?” Glimmer replied. “She… she still sleeps in that position actually…”  
  
“W-What?” Catra couldn’t believe that, but at the same time, Glimmer had no real reason to lie. Being such a goody two shoes, she wasn’t sure if she was even capable of doing that. “So… I wasn’t the only one… missing…” Catra mumbled to herself so quietly, not even she was clear if those were just thoughts or words she had actually spoken out. Glimmer though, heard them, but didn’t comment on it. It wasn’t like any of this was really new information to her anyways.  
  
“Do you mind continuing?” Glimmer coughed. Turning her head, she wanted to hide her smile from Catra. If she were to see how happy she was for both of them, that could easily be the end of this discussion. Catra didn’t take a lot of prompting to do something rash, such as storm off in anger.  
  
Blushing a bit, Catra coughed before nodding. “Y-Yeah, sure…” Scratching her neck a bit, she gathered her thoughts again. “So yeah, we had a lot of sleepovers. Lonnie would often complain about us giggling and talking all night until we just passed out, but that all turned out better once Kyle came up with this genius invention we dubbed earstuffers,” Catra said, sounding somewhat proud of it, even though she had been the reason for having to come up with something like that.  
  
“You mean… earplugs? Like, things you put into your ear so it muffles other noises?”  
  
“You mean to tell me that’s already a thing?” Catra sounded slightly shocked. “Well, there goes Kyle’s idea of patenting them. Oh well…” With a shrug of her shoulders, Catra adjusted her position a bit before continuing: “Yeah, so once Lonnie got those, we actually got to have more of our sleepovers and our nightly talks without interruptions,” Catra said, smiling even wider now. It was hard to not remember all those times, as clear as day. Just laying in Adora’s bed, giggling as they talked about everything and anything that came into their head. Eventually though, as they had grown older, the topics had started to change, as one might expect.  
  
“So, what did you talk about then?” Glimmer inquired, looking briefly at Catra over her shoulder.  
  
“Well, first it was… the usual childish stuff. What we’d want to be when we grew up, you know, but…” Catra struggled to continue. Her throat felt a bit dry and she had to force her mouth open a bit to speak up. Glimmer simply stayed quiet and waited patiently, much to Catra’s liking. She had never been good when it came to feelings, let alone opening up like this. It had been hard to do even with Adora, let alone anyone else, like her sworn enemy.  
  
“But eventually, it… it turned into… something more deep, more personal…” Lifting up her hand from the ground, Catra interlocked her fingers and swirled them around nervously. This was all in the past, yet reliving it even like this made her feel like she was still in that worn out, but somehow warm bed, underneath the blankets without a care in the world. As long as Adora was there with her, she had no reason to worry.  
  
“I suppose being a cadet, you weren’t taught much about things that didn't matter to a soldier, right? So it all must have been pretty--”  
  
“Confusing?” Catra interrupted. “Oh yes, very much so,” Catra let out a high pitched giggle. “To put it mildly. But we just… had this bond. Every waking moment we’d want to be with each other. I didn’t… really say it out loud back then, but when we talked about our futures... what we wanted to see and do... it was always me and her. Nothing else really mattered to me. What mattered to me was that… she was there with me. Anything else, any other hardship, I could take head on just as long as she was there with me…”  
  
It took Catra longer than Glimmer to realize that she wasn’t just sniffling; she was crying. Trying to reach out to her, Glimmer was reminded of the harsh reality of their situation when her hand bumped back from the energy barrier. “Catra, are you… okay?”  
  
Looking at her hands, Catra tried to fight back against the inevitable. She had taken great pride in the fact that she had been able to harden herself into a seemingly perfect soldier, but the words of Double Trouble didn’t leave her head. She wasn’t really up for this. She had never been. It had all been an act; a desperate cry of someone who had been raised in an environment that had made emotions out to be a weakness that could get you killed.  
  
Slamming the ground hard, Catra buried her head into her knees as she sobbed. Glimmer pulled her hand back, but now turned to properly look at Catra. She still didn’t like her after what she had done, but she couldn’t hate her. Knowing that she was just like Adora, someone who was her closest friend, it wouldn’t take much work; only a little bit of kindness; to expand the best friend squad by one. But now, she was unable to do anything. Only offer words of comfort.  
  
“C-Catra…” Glimmer stuttered.  
  
Catra’s entire body was shaking as she tried to stop her sobbing, but it was unsuccessful. After a minute or so of crying and sniffling, Catra slowly tilted and turned her head just enough to get a look at Glimmer. “I… it was never supposed to go like this. It was… it was us… and the world. But now I can’t see a future with either…” Catra gulped.  
  
Glimmer looked Catra straight into her eyes; eyes that were now red from all the crying. Tears were still dry against her face hair, but that didn’t seem to bother either of them. Kneeling down a bit, Glimmer offered Catra a faint, but warm smile. “Adora has never given up on you, not even when… everyone in the world had given her a reason to. I believe in my friends and they will come and save us.”  
  
Catra let out a dry, forced laugh. “Us? Why would s-she -- they try to save me? After everything that I’ve done… I don’t deserve--”  
  
If there wasn’t a barrier between the two of them, Catra would have felt a hard and quick slap on her cheek. Instead, she was now startled by a loud thump as Glimmer punched the barrier hard enough to send shockwaves to the other side of it. “Adora sees the good in you, so I chose to see that too. It’s not going to be easy after everything you’ve done, but… I believe in my friends and they believe in me, even when I’ve given them reasons not to…” Glimmer faintly looked at her hands. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t conjure her magic despite how determined she was feeling. “So you don’t have permission to do so either, you hear me? Adora and others are coming, they are coming to save us. And that includes you too. We will drag you out of this hellhole screaming if we have to.”  
  
Catra cleaned her eyes on her uniform. Slowly, she stood up and turned to face Glimmer properly. “...Does she really not... hate me?”  
  
Now it was Glimmer’s turn to force a laugh out of herself. Putting her hands on her hips, she shook her head. “You’re the one who knows Adora better than anyone, yet you’re asking me? I think you already know the answer to your own question. You’re just afraid of what happens next.”  
  
Putting her hands around herself, Catra turned her back to Glimmer, looking at the ground now. “Is it… so bad to be afraid? Showing emotions, being vulnerable, it goes against… everything we’ve been taught. It’s not… so easy to just… break free.”  
  
“It is if you want it to be. You just have to be brave.”  
  
Looking around, Catra’s sharp eyes noticed a prime clone walking down the hallway towards them. Glancing over her shoulder for one last time, Catra smirked wide enough for her sharp teeth to show. “So… you want to break free, huh? Well, I think I know how we can take care of that.” And with that, Catra was gone.  
  
“You two really are idiots…” Glimmer sighed to herself. “Ones that even the universe itself can’t seem to keep apart.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me at Twitter at https://twitter.com/lordofspiritsan  
> If you have ideas, suggestions, feedback, comment, anything like that, feel free to contact me.


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